Injury to ribs KOs Eddie Chambers

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Heavyweight contender Eddie Chambers suffered fractured ribs in training and has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled 10-round bout with former titleholder Sergei Liakhovich, promoter Main Events announced Friday night.

Chambers and Liakhovich were due to meet Jan. 21 in the inaugural main event of NBC Sports Network's "Fight Night" card at the Asylum Arena in Philadelphia, Chambers' hometown.

Main Events said that Chambers suffered displaced fractures of his left anterior ninth and tenth ribs.

Main Events said it is seeking a replacement for Chambers, who withdrew from his second consecutive fight because of an injury, although finding a quality heavyweight to take the fight on a week's notice would appear unlikely.

Chambers (36-2, 18 KOs) was also scheduled to face Tony Thompson in a title eliminator on Oct. 28 for the right to become the mandatory challenger for champion Wladimir Klitschko, but he pulled out, citing a bad back. Chambers then declined to reschedule the fight with Thompson for Dec. 17 and wound up signing to fight Liakhovich (25-4, 16 KOs) instead.

The rest of the card remains intact, including the scheduled 10-round co-feature, Philadelphia junior middleweight Gabriel Rosado (18-5, 10 KOs) against Mexico's Jesus Soto-Karass (24-6-3, 16 KOs). Also on the card, welterweight Joel "Love Child" Julio (37-4, 31 KOs) faces Chris Fernandez (19-14-1, 12 KOs).

Dan Rafael covers boxing for ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter.

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Dan Rafael

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• ESPN.com boxing writer since 2005
• Writes pound-for-pound rankings
• Five years at USA Today